Health: Neglected Tropical Diseases

Lord Stone of Blackheath Excerpts

Wednesday 30th January 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Stone of Blackheath]

My Lords, my involvement in this area has come about from chairing DIPEx, an online health charity. We publish videos and audio interviews conducted over 10 years of qualitative research into people’s personal experiences of illness by a brilliant team of academics at Green Templeton College, Oxford. Our website, healthtalkonline, was featured last week in the Times as number two in the top 50 websites that “you cannot live without”. We are good at publicity. Sir Tom Hughes-Hallett, the chair of the Institute of Global Health Innovation at Imperial College, has been a great supporter of DIPEx International, and he thought that perhaps our methodology of videoing patients’ experiences might help NTD workers to record and report their effectiveness because they do not get enough exposure; they are neglected. We are looking at that with the institute.

When I met Professor Alan Fenwick, the expert at the Schistosomiasis Control Initiative at Imperial College, he amazed me. The initiative has used its DfID funding to such great effect that it facilitated some 4 million treatments against schistosomiasis in its first year, which was 2011. By 2012 it had reached eight countries and provided 15 million treatments. Similarly, the Centre for Neglected Tropical Diseases at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine has increased its number of treatments against lymphatic filariasis from 35 million in 2011 to 52 million in 2012. Both are confident that they will further expand their coverage in 2013 and get to Ethiopia, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Cote d’Ivoire.

It is excellent that DfID funding is reaching the poorest of the poor with cost-effective treatments of NTDs, but the world should view addressing these diseases not only within the health context, of course, but also in the important economic context. The Hudson Institute says that about 50 million DALYs—disability adjusted life years—are lost in developing countries to the NTDs alone. The treatment of NTDs is immensely cost-effective on a massive scale. The teams involved in these projects want the correct measurements, graphic representation and feedback loops in place to prove the effectiveness of allocating further huge resources to this work because it pays over the long term. The sources of funding are entitled to know that the route whereby their cash is getting to good causes is providing value for money. If they know that, they can target their funding better and co-operate across the piece, and thence give more. Yesterday evening, Lindsey Wu of Policy Cures described the integration of the malaria vaccine technology road map being co-ordinated by the World Health Organisation. It seeks to involve players at all stages of malaria control and elimination and considers how that can back into early stage vaccine work. This type of holistic approach at all stages goes beyond the lab to deliver the most impact on the ground.

There are, of course, powerful drivers for “commercial” funders to conduct R&D on drugs and thus develop vaccines and diagnostics, but not enough resources are allocated to the less commercial end, which is that of vector control. Millions of people could be prevented from getting these diseases in the first place. Furthermore, more attention is needed on the less exciting areas of operational research, implementation and logistics, as well as an integrated approach to multiple NTDs.

This whole project is amazingly heartening and I urge the Minister to look at the need for well informed, powerfully and graphically presented feedback loops, which could inspire greater integration of funding and bring the successful treatments of these neglected diseases to the attention of the larger world community; thereby supporting these great people working in this field and enabling millions of wonderful individuals in these countries not only to live but to live better lives.